


The Only Difference Between Love and Friendship Is Press Coverage

by RedOrchid



Series: Crossroads (choose your own adventure fic) [1]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Comment Fic, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-27
Updated: 2008-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedOrchid/pseuds/RedOrchid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fame isn't all it's cracked up to be</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Difference Between Love and Friendship Is Press Coverage

It’s no big deal at first. The rumours, the gossip, the attention—it’s all pretty heady really, having people who don’t even know him scream his name and want to know what kind of underwear he uses. It’s powerful, being able to get a whole section of the Internet buzzing just by cracking a joke, just for being lame with his best friends and having a good time.

  
_Oh, we’re still so young, desperate for attention…_   


  


He spent his whole life before the band being ignored, being _that kid_ , the one most people would roll their eyes at when they weren’t laughing at his antics. Laughing _at_ , never _with_ him. The gentle teasing with Ryan and Spencer is different, in a way that makes him giddily happy inside. They give a shit. Someone actually gives a shit about who he is, not just because of what Brendon can do for them, how he can entertain them.

He loves to perform. Somehow, he still does. There’s a rush to it, the feeling of stepping out on the stage and _become_ something, something larger and more amazing than himself. On stage, he can be whoever he wants to be for the night, whoever the audience wants him to be. He’ll stand in the centre, soak up the attention and be the god they want, the god of sex or of music or of mystery—or maybe a little bit of all of them. He learns quickly how to make the crowd scream, how to turn on the taps of ecstasy, how to make them almost faint.

  


_Let’s get these teen hearts beating faster, faster…_  


  


He loves his band, and he’s so proud. Proud of _them_ and what they have accomplished. Sometimes at night, when the bus is quiet and all is dark around him, he can almost feel the faith that used to burn so bright inside of him start up again, that feeling of complete humility and gratitude for what he’s been given hitting him so strongly he can barely breathe. He channels it into his music, letting fingers against the strings of his guitar be his prayer, be his thanks and his confession. And when Ryan pulls him down on the couch and spoons his front to Brendon’s back as they watch movies late, late at night, there is no place in the world he’d rather be.

***

The first year on tour, the gay thing is not even an issue. Sure, everywhere they go, people will ask about their clothes, their makeup, the cuddles and the innuendo, but it doesn’t bother any of them. (Spencer gets pissed off at the girl jokes sometimes, but usually he takes it in a stride. Brendon even caught him practicing his super model bitch face in the mirror once—complete with the jaunty stance and all.) It’s all rather cute, actually. Plus, it gives him some great opportunities to needle Ryan, to make him blush and stutter and smile. And he should, Brendon thinks, because Ryan has taken himself and his life far too seriously since he was far too young. And what eighteen-year-old does not like to joke about sex? Seriously?

(Looking back, Brendon thinks that he was probably far too overwhelmed with the feeling of having real friends, _best friends_ , back then—that it completely overshadowed anything else. When he touched Ryan during those first few tours, the want was emotional, not physical. He wanted Ryan’s heart above all, and Spencer’s and Brent’s (and once Brent was gone, he wanted Jon’s), and they all gave that to him, made Brendon belong, and that somehow pushed sex aside, or at least re-directed the focus. He remembers lying in bed with Ryan towards the end of _Circus_ , snuggled close and comfortable, whispering stories into the dark about girls and sex and satisfaction. He doesn’t remember the girls anymore, not more than a very few, but he remembers every word between Ryan and him on those nights, the sense of complete trust and love and _home_. Sex never stood a chance.)

  


_We’re feeling so good, just the way that we do when it’s nine in the afternoon…_  


  


The first real squirms of unease come when Keltie and Ryan move on from semi-secret dating to becoming an official couple. There have always been fans who didn’t like their girlfriends—all the way from the start—but Brendon always put this down to jealousy or envy and didn’t think much about it. With Keltie it’s different. It’s _vicious_. And it’s far too personal. There are people who dig up things so private that Brendon goes red both from blushing and from rage. Some things are true, some are lies, but it’s the Internet, so no one seems to care to even try and separate the two. The day he drops by Ryan’s place and finds Keltie in a crying heap on the bed with a broken laptop lying in a mass of broken glass under what used to be Ryan’s beautiful, gilded mirror is one of the worst of his life. Because it doesn’t matter that Ryan knows the truth, or that Brendon does, or that Keltie’s family and close friends do when the “official” resume of her life suddenly includes a gruesome rape and a second-trimester abortion. When it doesn’t help to shout that _it’s a fucking lie_ from the rooftops, because people will believe the juicy stuff, the drama, the details that allow them to judge and hate and pity.

  


_What a wonderful caricature of intimacy…_  


  


The last one is almost the worst one. Brendon starts to feel the burn of it when Ryan and Keltie have been together for about six months, when the fans start to whisper _Don’t worry, he’ll come around_ in his ear as they hug him. Or even worse, _We’re working on it, just hang on._ He hates how he can’t be tired without being “heartbroken” or how Ryan can’t smile at him without being called a cheater. Most of all, he hates how careful the outer pressure is making them with each other, pushing back the easy banter and spontaneous jokes during interviews that Brendon really used to love. The teasing, the intimacy, the two of them—it’s dying slowly, withering away.

“What type of snacks do you prefer, salty or sweet?” a blonde, perky British show host asks, reading from one of her cue cards, and Brendon flashes back to the beginning, sees himself murmuring a sultry _why, salty, of course_ into the mike with a meaningful wiggle of his eyebrows in Ryan’s direction. Inside his mind, he can see Ryan crack up, the interviewer blush and the audience laugh and giggle at the joke, taking it for what it is. Now, he desperately ransacks his mind for a type of candy that a) is not one of Ryan’s favourites, b) does not involve chocolate or anything else where the colour can be directly associated with Ryan’s eyes or any other part of his body, c) in no way resembles a phallic object, and d) does not involve licking, sucking or getting your fingers sticky in order to eat. “Gummy bears,” he says at last, flashing a wide smile at the camera. “That’s my favourite candy right now.” Beside him, Ryan twists his lips in a sad little smile and doesn’t comment.

  


_And isn’t this exactly where you’d like me, I’m exactly where you’d like me, you know…_  


  


The stage shows are what keeps him going. There he can still be free, put on a show that’s a hundred percent him or someone completely different. On stage, in the performance, he can bleed together with the music, their music, and feel that sense of rightness again. He can joke with Jon and needle Spencer and move close, close to Ryan’s back, sliding a hand around the slim waist and breathe in the scent of him with his mouth pressed to Ryan’s neck. On the stage, they’re free again, and Brendon craves it every night.

The true irony of it all is that he does want Ryan. Has wanted him for a very long time, as a matter of fact, though he didn’t realise how much until well after Jon joined them and the feeling of being a family settled back in. He doesn’t remember how it started anymore, when the tug at his heart grew and spread into his bloodstream. They haven’t exactly talked about it, but Brendon is pretty sure he’s not alone in this. There’s a fantasy in his head where they’re in San Fransisco, walking down the wharf, arms around one another, kissing lazily in the sunshine and no one around them bothering to even give them a second glance. As it stands, they’ve kissed exactly once—in a stupid game of spin the bottle at a party they were both too drunk to remember the next day—and that picture exists in about five million copies in cyberspace. The silent, tacit decision they both seem to have made somewhere along the road is fundamentally tied to this, Brendon thinks—not wanting to share everything inside themselves with a million strangers. The straight thing is easier; dating Keltie, the worst questions Ryan gets are about when they’ll be getting married and what the sex is like, both which can easily be answered with a smile and a “sorry, that’s private.” Dating Brendon, nothing would be sacred. Not them, not their families, not their music. Before Ryan and Keltie got serious, Brendon used to sometimes think about someday in the future when they’d moved on to something else and their spot in the limelight had been claimed by another band of seventeen-year-olds with loud laughs and stars in their eyes. Those days, he would smile at Ryan across the room and think _someday_. Now, he’s not so sure it will happen at all.

  
_We must reinvent love, reinvent love…_  


  
He’s standing on a balcony at their hotel in LA, looking out over the ocean. He feels Ryan before he hears him, feels the familiar tug and tune-in of his body, the familiar _something_ of Ryan striking a chord in his subconsciousness.

“Hi.”

Brendon murmurs something in reply, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the black waters. Inside the hotel suite a party is raging. It feels very distant even from here, just a few yards away.

“How are you?” Ryan’s voice is soft, and the obvious concern in his voice is almost painful. There was a time when he wouldn’t have had to ask, when they were so constantly wrapped up in one another that they practically shared a brain.

“I miss you.” It wasn’t what he meant to say, but once the words cross his lips, Brendon realises that he needed to say them. Ryan’s fingers shift on the railing, hovering in hesitation for a second before coming down on top of Brendon’s, pressing their skin together.

“I miss you too. All the time.”

Brendon smiles at that, lacing their fingers more firmly together. “Did you find the ring you wanted?”

Ryan nods and puts his other hand in the pocket of his jacket, taking out a small, velvet box. It’s a beautiful ring. Simple but still ornate and really quite stunning. Keltie is going to love it.

“It’s perfect.”

Ryan looks up, a strand of hair brushing softly across his eyes before Brendon raises his free hand and tucks it behind Ryan’s ear. They look at each other, drifting a little closer without meaning to, just because that’s what they do, they hold on to one another. Finally, Ryan breaks the connection and looks back down on the ring in his hand. “I’m not completely sure about this.”

The confession is scarcely more than a whisper, and for a moment, it's as though they’re back at the beginning again, where everything is easy.

“Beautiful ‘someday?’” Brendon asks quietly, knowing the thoughts and doubts that are going through Ryan’s head because they’re going through Brendon’s too.

Ryan nods. “It’s been in there for so long. I’m not sure how I’d get it out now.”

Brendon murmurs something in agreement, thinking of lazy kisses and walks in the sun, of anonymity and the slide of skin against skin on the cool sheets of Ryan’s bed. Then he thinks of Keltie’s hair, and of Ryan’s smile as he twists it around his long fingers, of shiny, conventional marriages that will bore the fans within a year. He thinks of Ryan’s quiet happiness at dinner earlier, one arm resting proudly around his girlfriend’s thin waist. He thinks of the utter delight and adoration in Ryan’s eyes when Keltie came to pick them up at the airport, thinks of quiet houses filled with music and chocolate-eyed children with golden hair. A few yards away, behind glass doors and gossamer curtains, people are dancing, singing, drinking, watching. It doesn’t seem to matter all that much now—no matter what the pictures look like, they’ll be second-rate gossip once the engagement story breaks. Brendon shifts closer, slides his free hand around Ryan’s waist.

“Time will tell, I guess. I think I’ll keep mine, though. Just so you know.”

He leans in before Ryan has a chance to reply, taking his time to really feel the different textures of the kiss before going deeper. He lets go of Ryan’s hand, wrapping both arms around his head, fingers threading through soft hair and shielding most of their faces from prying eyes and cameras. Ryan moans into his mouth, adding his own arms around Brendon’s head to complete the cocoon, and from a distance, it probably looks as though they’re just huddling together, talking about something they don’t want others to hear. Brendon’s mouth turns needy and wanting and he wishes they had more time, that they could have had this night just for them before they take the step back and everything shifts. From the sounds coming from Ryan’s throat (not to mention the heat he can feel building where they’re pressed tightly against one another) he knows that he’s not the only one thinking it. When they finally break apart, their hands linger on shoulders and hips, neither willing to completely pull away.

“It’s almost midnight,” Brendon states softly, and that’s all he needs to say, all he’s able to say. Ryan smiles against his cheek, a quick, mournful tug of lips.

“Yeah,” he says, pulling back. “The fireworks will start soon. I guess I’d better get ready.”

“Pour the champagne,” Brendon hums against his hair, low and teasing, and Ryan laughs.

  
_Pour the champagne…_  


THE END

Choose-your-own-adventure sequel [here](http://redorchids.livejournal.com/40353.html)  



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